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The President’s report highlighted just how much has been achieved by the club over the past year — and the Treasurer’s report highlighted just how much it has cost us! 🙂

The committee ballot was short‐circuited by Tony Gray withdrawing his nomination during the meeting and all members of the new committee were elected unopposed. This is the first time in many, many years that Tony has not been on the committee in one form or another!

Finally, Paul Webb was awarded the honour of ‘Clubman of the Year’ in recognition of his efforts with the new public layout and getting the junior affiliate program up and running.

Sadly, long time WAMRC member Ian Rourke passed away just before Christmas last year after a long battle with illness. Fellow WAMRC member Norm Chapple presented a moving eulogy at his funeral, and with the permission of Ian’s family and Norm we have been allowed to reproduce it on Ian’s memorial page.

Three years ago (to the day!) the simple shade‐cloth patio protecting a portion of the outdoor area at the club was destroyed in a storm. Since then we have been trying to figure out a way to replace it.

The original was built by our senior club members over a long period of time using salvaged and second‐hand materials. There were two problems with adopting this approach again: 1) Clearly cobbling something together using second hand materials isn’t strong enough to stand up to storms and 2) our senior members are now too senior to contemplate this sort of activity, and our less senior members either don’t have the necessary skills or time to be able to contemplate it.

We applied to Lotterywest for a grant to build a new patio and yesterday we were successful! We should receive the grant within a week allowing us to book a contractor to complete the work at the first opportunity.

A big thank‐you to our President, John Kinson who was the driving force behind getting quotes, completing the mountain of paperwork and liaising with Lotterywest.

Haskell Co. have pictures of the L‐Class in production in multiple liveries on their Facebook page — and even have the boxes ready. Shipping looks to be just around the corner! Here are a sample of some of the photos — visit their Facebook page for lots more.

In preparation for the completion of the Eastern Goldfields Railway gauge conversion from narrow to standard gauge in 1968, The Western Australian Government Railways started taking delivery of 23 L Class Diesel locomotives in 1967. The first 23 L Class were built by Clyde Engineering in Granville, NSW and based on the United States manufactured SD40 by Electro Motive Division (EMD). Reduced in height from the SD40 to meet Australian loading gauge requirement; the L class was the largest and heaviest locomotive operated by the Government Railways at the time.

Unlike Eastern States modellers who have been well catered for with ready to run locomotives and rolling stock from their government railways, The WA modeller has not been well served in HO scale having to rely on kits or repainted US outline locomotives and rolling stock. In particular the L class was produced as a resin kit by the Victorian Hobby Centre, and Northern Models.

Enter 2014/2015 and two HO scale model railway manufacturers have announced their intention to produce the L class locomotive. Southern Rail were first to announce their L class in May 2014 followed by Haskell in 2015. WA modellers attending the 40th Anniversary of the AMRA Model Railway Exhibition held at the Claremont Showgrounds Exhibition Centre over the June 2015 long weekend, were privy to see and handle Haskell’s first production samples of their HO scale L class locomotives.

WAMRC Life Member Tony Gray in maroon jacket showing great interest in Haskell’s production sample L class locomotive

Photos courtesy of Haskell’s Facebook page.

Haskell intend on releasing the L class in a variety of liveries.

WAGR original livery of blue and white Engine numbers: L254, L255, and L263

All of the image galleries from the club’s old website have now been migrated across to this new website. This was the final outstanding bit of the old website to be migrated — so the new website is now complete and the old one can be retired permanently.

To see the image galleries, click on “Galleries” in the menu bar at the top — or follow this link: Galleries